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Part 36: break and continue

A while back, when I wrote another simple compiler for a typeless language, I didn't use an abstract syntax tree. This made it awkward to add the break and continue keywords to the language.

Here, we do have an AST tree for each function. This makes it much easier to implement break and continue. I'll outline the reasons for this below.

Adding the break and continue

Unsurprisingly, we have two new tokens T_BREAK and T_CONTINUE, and the scanner code in scan.c recognises the break and continue keywords. As always, browse the code to see how this is done.

New AST Node Types

We also have two new AST node types in defs.h: A_BREAK and A_CONTINUE. When we parse a break keyword, we can generate an A_BREAK AST leaf; ditto an A_CONTINUE leaf for the continue keyword.

Then, when we walk the AST to generate the assembly code, when we encounter an A_BREAK node, we need to generate an assembly jump to the label at the end of the loop that we are currently in. And for A_CONTINUE, we jump to the label just before the loop condition is evaluated.

Now, how do we know which loop we are in?

Tracking the Most Recent Loop

Loops can be nested, and so there can be any number of loop labels in use at any point. This is what I found difficult when I wrote my previous compiler. Now that we have an AST which we traverse recursively, we can pass the details of the latest loop's labels down to our children in the AST tree.

We already do this sort of thing to get to the end of an 'if' or 'while' statement. Here's some of the code for generating the assembly for 'if' from gen.c:

// Generate the code for an IF statement
// and an optional ELSE clause
static int genIF(struct ASTnode *n) {
  int Lfalse, Lend;

  // Generate two labels: one for the
  // false compound statement, and one
  // for the end of the overall IF statement.
  Lfalse = genlabel();
  Lend = genlabel();

  // Generate the condition code followed
  // by a jump to the false label.
  genAST(n->left, Lfalse, n->op);

The left-hand AST child is the one that evaluates the 'if' statement's condition, so it needs access to the label that we have just generated. So when we generate this child's assembly output with genAST(), we also pass in the label's details.

For loops, we need to pass to genAST() the label which is at the loop's end and also the label just before the code that evaluates the loop's condition. To this end, I've changed the interface to genAST():

int genAST(struct ASTnode *n, int iflabel, int looptoplabel,
           int loopendlabel, int parentASTop);

We keep the existing iflabel and augment this with the two loop labels. Now we need to pass to genAST() the labels that are generated for each loop. So, in the code to generate the 'while' loop code:

static int genWHILE(struct ASTnode *n) {
  int Lstart, Lend;

  // Generate the start and end labels
  Lstart = genlabel();
  Lend = genlabel();

  // Generate the condition code followed
  // by a jump to the end label.
  genAST(n->left, Lend, Lstart, Lend, n->op);

  // Generate the compound statement for the body
  genAST(n->right, NOLABEL, Lstart, Lend, n->op);
  ...
}

genAST() is Recursive

Now, what about nested loops? Consider the code:

L1:
  while (x < 10) {
    if (x == 6) break;
L2:
    while (y < 10) {
      if (y == 6) break;
      y++;
    }
L3:
    x++;
  }
L4:

the if (y == 6) break should leave the inner loop and jump to the x++ code (i.e. L3), and the if (x == 6) break; code should leave the outer loop and jump to label L4.

This works because genAST() calls genWHILE() for the outer loop. This calls genAST(L1, L4) so that the first break sees these loop labels. Then, when we hit the second loop, genWHILE() is called again. It generates new loop labels and calls genAST(L2, L3) to generate the inner loop code. Thus, the second break sees the L2 and L3 labels, not the L1 and L4 labels.

Finally, once the inner compound statement is generated, the inside genAST() returns, and get back to the code which sees L1 and L4 as the loop labels.

Implications of the Above

What this means, in terms of implementation, is that anywhere that something calls genAST() (including itself), and we could be in a loop, then the current loop labels must get propagated down to the children involved.

We have already seen the change to genWHILE() to pass to genAST() the new loop labels. Let's look at where else we need to propagate loop labels.

When I first implemented break, I wrote this test program

int main() {
  int x;
  x = 0;
  while (x < 100) {
    printf("%d\n", x);
    if (x == 14) { break; }
    x = x + 1;
  }
  printf("Done\n");

and generated the assembly for it. The break was being turned into a jump to label L0, i.e. the loop's end label wasn't getting to the code dealing with break. Looking at a stack trace for the compiler, I realised that:

  • The genAST() for the function called
  • genWHILE() for the loop which generated the labels and passed them to
  • genAST() for the loop body, which called
  • genIF() which passed no labels in to
  • genAST() for the 'if' body. Hence, the break never saw the labels.

So I also had to modify the argument list for genIF():

static int genIF(struct ASTnode *n, int looptoplabel, int loopendlabel);

I won't go through all the code in gen.c, but open up the file in an editor or text viewer and look for all the genAST() calls to see where the loop labels do get propagated.

Finally, we actually do need to generate the assembly code for break and continue. Here is the code to do it in genAST() in gen.c:

    case A_BREAK:
      cgjump(loopendlabel);
      return (NOREG);
    case A_CONTINUE:
      cgjump(looptoplabel);
      return (NOREG);

Parsing break and continue

This time around I covered the code generation side before the parsing, but now it's time to get to the parsing of these new keywords. Luckily the syntax is either break ; or continue ;. So it would seem that they should be easy to parse. There is, of course, a small wrinkle.

We parse individual statements in single_statement() in stmt.c, so the change is small:

    case T_BREAK:
      return (break_statement());
    case T_CONTINUE:
      return (continue_statement());

with a slight change in compound_statement() to ensure that the statement is followed by a semicolon:

compound_statement(void) {
  struct ASTnode *left = NULL;
  struct ASTnode *tree;

  ...
  while (1) {
    // Parse a single statement
    tree = single_statement();

    // Some statements must be followed by a semicolon
    if (tree != NULL && (tree->op == A_ASSIGN || tree->op == A_RETURN
                         || tree->op == A_FUNCCALL || tree->op == A_BREAK
                         || tree->op == A_CONTINUE))
      semi();
    ...
}

Now the wrinkle. This following program is not legal:

int main() {
  break;
}

as there is no loop to break out of. We need to track the depth of the loops we are parsing, and only allow a break or continue statement when the depth is not zero. Thus, the functions to parse these keywords look like:

// Parse a break statement and return its AST
static struct ASTnode *break_statement(void) {

  if (Looplevel == 0)
    fatal("no loop to break out from");
  scan(&Token);
  return (mkastleaf(A_BREAK, 0, NULL, 0));
}

// continue_statement: 'continue' ;
//
// Parse a continue statement and return its AST
static struct ASTnode *continue_statement(void) {

  if (Looplevel == 0)
    fatal("no loop to continue to");
  scan(&Token);
  return (mkastleaf(A_CONTINUE, 0, NULL, 0));
}

Loop Levels

We are going to need a Looplevel variable to track the level of the loops being parsed. This is in data.h:

extern_ int Looplevel;                  // Depth of nested loops

We need to set the level up as required. Each time we start a new function, the level is set to zero (in decl.c):

// Parse the declaration of function.
struct ASTnode *function_declaration(int type) {
  ...
  // Get the AST tree for the compound statement and mark
  // that we have parsed no loops yet
  Looplevel= 0;
  tree = compound_statement();
  ...
}

Now, each time we parse a loop, we increment the loop level for the loop's body (in stmt.c):

// Parse a WHILE statement and return its AST
static struct ASTnode *while_statement(void) {
  ...
  // Get the AST for the compound statement.
  // Update the loop depth in the process
  Looplevel++;
  bodyAST = compound_statement();
  Looplevel--;
  ...
}

// Parse a FOR statement and return its AST
static struct ASTnode *for_statement(void) {
  ...
  // Get the compound statement which is the body
  // Update the loop depth in the process
  Looplevel++;
  bodyAST = compound_statement();
  Looplevel--;
  ...
}

And this gives us the ability to determine if we are inside a loop or not inside a loop.

The Test Code

Here is the test code, tests/input71.c:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
  int x;
  x = 0;
  while (x < 100) {
    if (x == 5) { x = x + 2; continue; }
    printf("%d\n", x);
    if (x == 14) { break; }
    x = x + 1;
  }
  printf("Done\n");
  return (0);
}

As I still haven't solved the "dangling else" problem, the break statement has to enclosed in '{' ... '}' to make it into a compound statement. Apart from that, the code works as expected:

0
1
2
3
4
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Done

Conclusion and What's Next

I knew that adding support for break and continue was going to be easier than it was for my earlier compiler, because of the AST. However, there were still some minor issues and wrinkles that we had to deal with in the process of implementing them.

Now that we have the break keyword in the language, I will attempt to add switch statements in the next part of our compiler writing journey. This is going to require the addition of switch jump tables, and I know this is going to be complicated. So get ready for an interesting next step.